Yeah, I was surprised that Mathews and Rielly have a total of only 6 PIM.
In other Maple Leaf social news. Are they or aren't they?
https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/comments/14urp3i
I have no complaints about the way these two have been playing. They’ve been the Leafs’ best players along with Nylander, up until he signed his multi million extension anyway. Kudos to them for not taking dumb penalties.
The two guys who are not earning their pay imo are Brodie and Tavares.
Brodie is all about playing position and stick checking. Very seldom you see him engage in physical puck battles or knock a guy down in front of the next or along the boards. He is no where near as a shut down d man and that’s why the Leafs haven’t been able to protect leads with him playing major minutes in those situations. He has minimal Offensive contributions. If he’s a 2 million or less player then it would be decent value, but for 5 millions he has way too little to offer.
Since getting his 1000 point Tavares has been awful. It seems he’s always behind the play and gets caught from behind. He’s never been known for being a fast skater and it looks to me that he has lost a step this season. Maybe he’s suffering from some sort of nagging injury that we don’t know of and hopefully he can bounce back. He’s been fortunate to have the opportunity to play with the Matthews/Marner/Nylander/Rielly combo and produce the numbers, but he’d be lucky to get half of that had he stayed in Long Island. The Leafs could have saved 5 millions by keeping Kadri instead and he would have produced similar numbers playing with the aforementioned combo.
I probably have ruffled some feathers on the fans of Brodie and Tavares, but that‘s the way I see things and I welcome any different opinions.
